#OurHypocrisy
The Ghana Association of Writers still on my Mind
Unfortunately for our children and future generations, we lack the capacity to take thoughts for tomorrow!
About the only thing we think about is ME, the rest of the society can go to blazes!
We do not appear to appreciate the fact we can never be bigger than the society in which we live.
What exactly, apart from contempt and disdain, do we expect foreigners to have for us as we chauffeur them around in our shining V8s, passing through potholed roads crying out for maintenance?
Do we expect the foreigner to be impressed as he sees our people in their rat-infested, mosquitoes-overwhelmed Ghost Towns (ghetto inside a ghetto)?
Of course, the foreigner will politely smile with us, but she surely will be wondering what type of human beings continue to sit on vast natural resources while eking out a miserable existence in Dickensian conditions banished from her country more than a century ago?
She will also be appalled by our penchant to shift blame and our inability to accept personal responsibilities.
Per our well-conditioned Mindsets, it is always someone else’s problem!
The writer who refuses to write and share his thoughts will be preoccupied with only three things:
- nitpicking those who do/did, and
- Blaming the president and other leaders!
- See foreigners as the cause of all of our woes
How could a Writer fail to understand that she is also a leader - an Opinion Leader?
Not content with selling off all the State assets bequeathed to us, we disposed of off all our natural resources without giving a thought to our children and to posterity!
Like some chiefs of old did, exchanging captured slaves for mirrors and gin, we remain eternal, or is it infernal, poor bargainers.
For a smartphone, our chiefs give away one or two plots of land, depending on the area. They will exchange 30-50 plots of land for a v8.
Of course, they appear not to understand that land is a finite commodity.
Those who are supposed to be the Custodian of our Tradition have forgotten that WE were not supposed to sell land; we hold it in Trust for future generations!
Do we ever pause to ask ourselves what we have to show for everything we have sold - state assets, gold, bauxite, timber, etc?
How did we end up selling gold and couldn’t generate enough money to provide ourselves with ordinary treated water to drink?
Oh, it is the Chinese fault.
They have come to destroy all our water bodies!
China is thousands of kilometers away from us.
Chinese are physically very distinct from us. Yet, in our quest to continue to blame foreigners, we don’t ask elementary questions like how did Chinese end up in our villages in the gold mining areas?
We lobbied hard to get the right to host the AfCTA Secretariat, rather than for us to see how we can upgrade our skills to enable us to compete at the vast vistas the new Trade Agreement opened for us, we turned Xenophobic!
It is always the Foreigners Fault.
We will then pick our pens up to denounce Mr. Trump!
Oh, our Hypocrisy!
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and ModernGhana, and Correspondent for the New African magazine, Femi lives in both Europe and Africa and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He was also the Man and Machine Coordinator at Alaye Dot Biz Limited, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organization that specializes in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
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